Doom, Quake creator John Romero making MMO first-person shooter

Keen readers may have noticed a trend running through the video game industry over the past week: It is the 1990s all over again. Not only is Double Dragon coming back; not only are Jane Jensen and Al Lowe making brand new Gabriel Knight and Leisure Suit Larry games; Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein 3D creator John Romero discussed his plan to make an original first-person shooter for the first time since 2000’s notorious flop Daikatana. Pour a glass of Surge and get ready to shoot the Cyberdemon until it dies.

Speaking with Eurogamer on Thursday, Romero said that while work on the game hasn’t started just yet, he plans on making a first-person shooter with “MMO-ish” qualities. “I’m definitely going to be making another shooter and it will be on PC first. I don’t want to talk about the details but I already know what it is,” said Romero. “I’ve already kind of designed the thing and it’s pretty cool—though of course, I am going to say that.”

The id co-founder did go into specifics with those features typical of massively multiplayer online games. “It’s a persistent game, it has persistent player data, the character grows and gets better over time,” said Romero, “You will be playing the game as you would expect a shooter to feel, but the specifics of your situation, narrative wrapper and reward system are all unique.”

His new game won’t play like the slower shooters popular today. “I’m not a fan of cover systems or the player being a bullet sponge. I’m not that interested in the tank-like player; I like feeling that I have skill in the game. I love twitch 180s, fast targeting, fast firing, fast movement. So anything that’s not like that—like current shooters that are basically a track going through a level to the exit and everything is closed off—is not interesting to me.”

Loot Drop, Romero’s current employer, may not be the studio that makes Romero’s persistent online first-person shooter.